Spike Lee to direct 'Time Traveler'

Rex Features

Spike Lee is to co-write and direct Time Traveler, a big screen adaptation of Ronald Mallett's 2006 memoir.

The filmmaker acquired the movie rights to Time Traveler: A Scientist's Personal Mission To Make Time Travel A Reality, which tells the story of one of the first African-Americans in the US to earn a Ph.D in theoretical physics.

Mallett, who co-wrote the memoir with bestselling author Bruce Henderson, became obsessed with building a time machine to save his father, who died of a heart attack when he was ten.

The book chronicles his rise from poverty in the Bronx to a successful career as a scientist and academic.